When there is a "lack" of code, drivers, support, etc. in the Linux community, 99.999% of the time, it is due to lack of vendor support. Talk to them first. Ask them for the documentation. Ask them for the code. For the drivers. If they say buzz off, then you have your answer.
Companies that make it hard or impossible to get their hardware working with Linux, make it hard to want to get it working with Linux. There are other vendors who do support and embrace Linux, and we should support them instead.
The unhelpful companies will take a hint, or they'll go away; either way, problem solved.
"Virtual Folders (in Evolution) are quite handy. I used to dump all of my email in silly folders until I came to the same realization as our poster. These messages really fall into multiple categories. So, I use Evolution's virtual folder feature to create folders such as "customer, vendors, eFaxes, Follow-up, Important". In the rules for folders such as vendor or customer, I add applicable email addresses or domain names under the 'sender' filter."
There are several problems with the current way Evolution stores and manages the mail using Virtual Folders:
No mbx support (which is MUCH faster than mbox, and is actually the wash.edu standard, not mbox like most people believe)
No way to export back to individual folders, and certainly not without making dupes per query. Try selecting all of the messages in a vfolder and move them to a "real" folder. Now go to another vfolder which happened to have some metadata that referred to some of those messages you just moved. Oops!
No way to "undo" a copy/move action between vfolders, complicating the whole sorting process.
While I agree vfolders are neat for finding some lost mail or items of specfic interest, I would never rely on them for actual "virtual storage" of email, and certainly not without a clean way to get the mail back out. If you decide to use some other product, and you have 600,000 mail messages in one folder.. you're back to square one, sorting them into the new application's metholdologies.
Separate folders is definately the way to go, and vfolder across them if you have to, but DEFINATELY don't lump all of your mail into one folder, and vfolder across THAT lone folder.
"Don't use canned, easy to filter, subject lines in your email messages; borrow subject lines from your host's mail spool (optionally, do so with only a small probability -- let evolution determine which subject lines are the most effective)."
I have a better idea.. since they're already spoofing the "From:" lines and can make up any subject they want, why not just scan the user's Inbox and take an existing (non-reply) subject, prepend a "Re: $SUBJECT" to it, and send it to the user. They'll see it as a reply to an existing Inbox thread, and mindlessly open it..
If it appears to come from someone they trust, perhaps even someone who would normally respond in a thread of that subject material, why wouldn't they just open the attachment? (thinking mom & pop Windows users here)
"But I just don't know if I'd trust my mom to run a secure Mandrake box if she can't even do Windows fucking Update."
The difference is (in most cases) that she doesn't HAVE to learn how to secure it. Linux distributions come with almost everything disabled, including the MTA and other unnecessary daemons. You have to explicitly turn them on, or enable their insecure modes to open your system to attack from outside parties.
How long has Microsoft had the Messenger service enabled by default? What about the "Remote Registry" service? How many times have you needed to use regedit.exe on a remote registry? I can count that as being NONE, but Microsoft still enables it by default. Dozens of other services and ports are left blindly open.. and that isn't even counting the applications which have exploitable holes themselves.
"If in fact they have copied BSD code in violation of the BSD, then it's very plausible that they have copied GNU/Linux code in violation of the GPL."
To take that one-step further, what if they copied GNU/Linux code into SCO's UnixWare product (or the core SysV that it is derived from), and removed all attribution from the code they copied, and sold that to Sun, HP, IBM, SGI, Fujitsu, and so on... and those companies wrote their OWN code based on that code, and contributed THAT (derived?) code to Linux (as IBM has with code they've independantly created, derived from AIX, passed to the Free Software community)?
If SCO claims they "own" Linux, Unix, the sun, and air, then this vindicates their illegal actions.
If SCO gets the GPL invalidated (yeah, right =), then what they did is also "allowed", since the license they "validated" was invalid to begin with.
"You all were bitching that document formats change "all the time", so I was merely stating that your precious config files change too, and no one bitches about that."
That wasn't me in the original post
Who cares about config files. Config files aren't the output format. Config files can (and should) change in ways that may be incompatible between releases. The documents themselves, should not be. They are completely separate, and unrelated things.
"Naturally. Instead, you will write yet another instant messaging client, or yet another wordprocessor that no one will use, or yet another simplistic game, or yet another text-frickin editor..."
Excuse me, we use it. Just because you don't doesn't mean it's not useful. We write this software for us, not for you. If you want to change our priorities, then you have to find a way to motivate us to write things you would want to use. Some of these could include the following:
Stocks or shares in your company
A paycheck attached to the development of your product
You and your companies have been living off of our creations now for several years. Saving thousands (and in some cases, millions) of dollars by using software we created in our spare time.
Now it's time you learned that this does not come for free.
Time costs money.
Hardware costs money.
Power costs money.
Bandwidth costs money.
Rent costs money.
Bills, groceries, health insurance, clothes.. all cost money
"Ya'll write a bunch of redundant "me-too" apps that matter not one iota."
They matter to us, and to the users that appreciate our creations. We don't really care what you want or think, because again, we do this for us, not for you. If you want to change that, feel free to try any of the techniques above.
"Sure, getting paid is nice but then, who is really going to pay you to produce this unsexy stuff?"
The same people who aren't paying us for the useful stuff we created that you use every day. OpenOffice.org? Mozilla? Linux? Samba? I'm sure I could name dozens of others. How much have you contributed to those projects?
"Ed Ball? Or any other small business for that matter? Hell no, they can't afford that cost with no monetary return."
How ironic. He can't "afford" the "cost" with no monetary return. What if every single Free Software author decided to just stop making new releases until they had a "monetary" return? What then? Would you consider donating or helping out? Probably not.
Incidentally, Ed Ball saved $80,000 by switching to Free Software, almost recouping his entire monetary losses from the damage settlement. If he even decided to donate $10,000 of that to Free Software, it would make a huge shift in the priorities for a LOT of developers and users.
"Hence we run into the contradiction: some software will not be created without money to pay for it and to pay for it requires that money be made to make up for it (at the very least) but since selling software is a no-no (and wont work with GPL - only service and support are sellable), this means that there is no way for required software to get produced."
Excuse me? When did the GPL forbid selling Free Software? In fact, the GPL directly encourages you to do so. I can download Red Hat from the web, make some changes, slap my name all over it, and sell it as my own product (assuming I do not include Red Hat specific tools that are not GPL compatible with it, of course). There is nothing at all stopping me from selling any Free Software I can manage to derive a market for. Go re-read your license.
"You will develop an app for money - that is, people are to pay for the application - until a certain minimum amount of money/income is reached, then it will be released GPL. You get paid, the software gets paid for (and not buy the simple charitable largess of some mystical company) by customers."
How about the same business model that has worked for centuries. If you want me to produce something for you, show me something in return. Monetary, contributory, congradulatory, or barter... it doesn't matter.
And I say, "If you buy software, remember to put the licence and CD-ROM in the software cupboard", and that's what everyone does.
And you think people aren't going into the cupboard, picking up that software, installing it (or making copies for their home machines) and putting it back during lunch breaks? Come on now. That's ENCOURAGING license infringement.
"Plus in the article it says some of the unlicenced computers were hand me downs - which is unfair to make people re license anyway"
Wait a minute.. does this mean I can't go out and buy a Dell computer, with Microsoft Windows installed on it, use it for a day, and then give it to my younger brother-in-law for use in school... without having to pay for a new Microsoft Windows license for the unit?
It's the same physical computer, running the same physical software it was shipped with. Why should I have to pay twice for it? Is this how Microsoft gets around the license discounts to OEM providers? Sell Microsoft Windows to Dell at $10.00/copy, then force end-users to pay full-price for it anyway? Nice scam.
Several *nix projects change their config file format more often than MS changes office formats.
When did an Open Source Office Productivity package come out that produces config files as its SaveAs format? I'm not aware of one. I produce documents that are meant to be printed, and viewed by other people, I don't use it to write "config files".
As you no-doubt already know, the format of an Office Productivity config file means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to an end user who will likely never be editing them. Who cares if the application is updated and the updates require different configuration options or config file formats.
You're comparing Apples to Orangutans here. Stay on topic.
"So then I got to thinking. If we knew what compiler and compiler options SCO used when they built their version of unix, we could build linux with that compiler and compiler options and have some pattern matching utility search for potentially duplicate machine code."
Why not take the easier road.. audit the Linux kernel and remove all references to code which can not POSSIBLY contain SCO's own IP. All pieces of code which were written by you, me, and others who independantly created the code and patches. Remove all of that. What remains will either contain SCO's IP, or be questionable. Run that through the owners and trace it back. It can't be that impossible to find out what code they're talking about.
Of course, the rest of their claim is ludicrous. They're charging HP $32.00/unit on the embedded Linux devices they sell. Call me crazy, but I don't recall the last time I saw one single embedded Linux device with SMP, NUMA, or RCU running on it. Do you?
This turned from a contract dispute with IBM, to an all-out attack on the GPL itself. I'll give you three guesses who is pulling the strings behind the SCO puppet these days.. and your first two guesses don't count.
"We're fighting for a right in the industry to make a living selling software," McBride said. "The whole notion that software should be free is something SCO doesn't stand for. We have drawn the line. We're supposed to be excited about that and we're not."
The IBM contract dispute was simply a smokescreen. They (or their puppeteer) does not like Free Software, period. They either want to be able to use it (which they can't), or abolish it (which they can't).
I eagerly await the letter from SCO to cease my use of my public Linux servers in exchange for a UnixWare license (which can't run any of my software anyway).
Once again I have to remind the slashdot crowd that replacing the offending code *now* is not sufficient to relieve you of all damages up until now.
Except that SCO themselves claims that they knew back in 2001 that their IP was allegedly in the Linux source tree. Why did they wait 2 more years? So more people could use, buy, adopt, and adapt "their" code, which means more people to extort this bogus licensing from. Sorry, that sword cuts both ways.
That would be like me embezelling money from my company every day, and when they catch me, I can just say "okay I will stop doing it now, so we are all square".
No, that would be like the law letting a rapist rape 20 women, instead of 1, so they can nail him on 20 counts of rape, instead of 1.
You are not all square... you have to pay for the IP you stole. End of story.
End of your story, yes, however, reality goes on. The real story is that the GPL is not a EULA. If there was infringing code or IP in the code I was given, which was transferred with the GPL, and no other exclusions or contracts that CLEARLY state that there is IP in the code I've received, I am not guilty of copyright infringement. Got that? Repeat it slowly.
Also, if IBM writes code on their own, which works with the SysV source tree that they bought a license to from SCO, IBM owns the copyright to that code that IBM created, NOT SCO. You can't claim copyright on someone else's copyrighted code. That's not how the law works.
In any case, I do not owe SCO anything for my dozens of Linux boxes, nor does any other Linux user, company, or business using, deploying, distributing, modifying, or selling Linux. Period.
(from simple things like getting cdparanoia to bomb immediately when it detects a scratch to halfway complex things like rewriting parts of klipper and XScreenSaver, which now picks a random screen saver on MMB and lets me scroll through all screensavers with the wheel =).
I presume all of these patches were sent upstream to the maintainers of said packages, so they can evaluate them and roll them into their core versions, riiiiiight? Even submitting them to the project mailing list would be advantageous for those other users who might find them useful.
One more reason to NEVER use GPLed code for ANYTHING EVAR[sic]!
Oh yes, instead, use the BSD license, which gives Linksys full control of the source code you (or your community) has written (full control of their copy of your code, that is), make modifications to it, and release products with those modifications (without releasing source), so now NOBODY can take advantage of the updated code. Nice.
No thank you, the GPL protects against exavtly this type of abuse.
Why not just make each confererence/meeting attendee an avatar in a virtual-reality landscape meeting. Change the location, change the layout of the room, etc. all "virtually", and have each person's face on the front of the avatar (no cartoony avatars, real people in real business suits).
If you're going to be in attendance over a videocamera + sound anyway, why not do it in a virtual-reality kind of interface, where the "meeting" takes place on an LCD monitor, with each "virtual" attendee represented by their avatar.
Didn't they do this same thing in "Demolition Man", where the entire meeting was attended by a bunch of people on tall LCD monitors on popsicle stick chairs?
"If there were nothing wrong with Windows there would be no Linux in the first place."
Excuse me, but what version of Windows must I purchase that allows me to run "Unix on x86 hardware"? I must have missed that version somewhere.
Do some more research and you'll find out that Linux does not exist to replace Microsoft products. In fact, that hasn't been the goal of a VERY large percentage of the Free Software/Open Source community. The purpose of Linux (and I'll wager to bet, BSD as well) is to provide a Free (and free) or near-free Unix for x86 hardware. Linus himself has repeatedly said this over and over.
That being said, Linux companies may be going directly for the throats of Microsoft's business model, but those Linux companies aren't contributing to the core codebase which comprises Linux itself.
If Microsoft was perfect, Linux would still exist, because Microsoft is not Free (or free), nor is it Unix.
Remember, we, as Free Software authors (note, most of us are unemployed now, and have been for well over a year or more), do this in our spare time. We focus on things that are interesting, innovative, or that pique our curiousities. What is the motivation for us, to get Linux working for a company, who will just use it to lower costs, but at the same time, not transfer those savings into hiring new people to work at their company?
We remain unemployed, while helping the company lower costs, so they can deploy Linux in their company, making their working environment cheaper and more efficient, and we get... bug reports. No thank you.
I work on Free Software because I like to, not because I have to. Once you make me feel like I "have to" work on the code, it no longer becomes fun. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. If it's not going to be "fun", then it better have some other benefit (i.e. like a job with a salary behind it or use some innovative new technology or something else) to make it interesting.
Let them feel the pain. When we're ready to make it work, we will.. or we won't. The source is there, they can certainly fix it themselves. Why do they have to "wait" for us to do it?
My code cannot be "closed off" or "taken" from me! My license ensures that what I wrote will always be free.
[fade back to reality]
You write "Project Foo".
You release "Project Foo" under the BSD License.
You host "Project Foo" on your web/ftp server for download.
"Some Company, Inc." looks at "Project Foo", and sees that by using it, they can save millions in development costs, and speed up their time to deliver a similar project being written in-house.
"Some Company, Inc." downloads "Project Foo" from your web/ftp server.
"Some Company, Inc." makes HUGE improvements to your code, adding a bunch of new features, and fixing some outstanding bugs, increasing performance by 20%.
"Some Company, Inc." then creates "SuperWidget 5.0" using your code inside it, and it becomes their sole proprietary flagship project.
The only way to obtain "SuperWidget 5.0" is through a very expensive licensing agreement, $5,000 per copy, and no, you don't get the source.
Yes, "Your" version of the code is still available on "Your" web/ftp server. Your code is now 20 features and 50 bugs behind "SuperWidget 5.0". Nobody can benefit from "Your" code with these new features, without paying "Some Company, Inc." $5,000 per copy for "SuperWidget 5.0".
How does the BSD license guarantee that the improvements made to the code, remain available to everyone who wants to benefit from them? It doesn't.
Explain to me again, how this still is a better license, when the code was closed off after improvements were made? What if it takes you 2 years (alone) to match what "Some Company, Inc." took 2 months and 10 programmers to do?
Even if some company like Microsoft takes your code and incorporates it into their product, the code you released to the public is still available and people can still benefit from it.
Not if the code is modified by Microsoft in this case. They can improve upon it, make it faster, add features, whatever, and they can refuse to release that updated code... and then nobody benefits from it.
The GPL protects against this kind of abuse of copyright.
BSD code is in there, in full compliance with the license.
Yet another confirming reason why the GPL is "more free" than the BSD license.
If you use the BSD license in your code, any company can use it for any reason, make changes to it, improve it, add features, and basically tell you to piss off, while at the same time, closing off your code, and using it in a proprietary capacity. This stifles innovation, and stops the ability of others to benefit from modifications to YOUR code.
Having a license which permits "Free" code to be closed off, and "taken" from a developer, is not my idea of an open license at all.
Again, the GPL prohibits this, and for this reason, will always remain the better choice if you wish to keep your code out in the open, where others can continue to benefit from it, regardless of who modifies it or what changes are made to the core codebase.
It would be trivially easy for some coder at MS to see some linux code, and put it into windows without anybody noticing.
And to bring this one paranoid step closer to reality, what if that code, copied from Linux, was then audited on the Microsoft side, and some Microsoft employee familiar with Linux code said "Hey, that code in Linux looks just like this code over here, that we wrote!", and immediately assumed that someone had copied the "Microsoft" code (which was actually stolen from Linux) into the Linux code, and not the reverse.
Slashdot Mirror
When there is a "lack" of code, drivers, support, etc. in the Linux community, 99.999% of the time, it is due to lack of vendor support. Talk to them first. Ask them for the documentation. Ask them for the code. For the drivers. If they say buzz off, then you have your answer.
Companies that make it hard or impossible to get their hardware working with Linux, make it hard to want to get it working with Linux. There are other vendors who do support and embrace Linux, and we should support them instead.
The unhelpful companies will take a hint, or they'll go away; either way, problem solved.
There are several problems with the current way Evolution stores and manages the mail using Virtual Folders:
While I agree vfolders are neat for finding some lost mail or items of specfic interest, I would never rely on them for actual "virtual storage" of email, and certainly not without a clean way to get the mail back out. If you decide to use some other product, and you have 600,000 mail messages in one folder.. you're back to square one, sorting them into the new application's metholdologies.
Separate folders is definately the way to go, and vfolder across them if you have to, but DEFINATELY don't lump all of your mail into one folder, and vfolder across THAT lone folder.
You mean it's turned into Entourage X (and this one)?
You can't deny the similarties .
I have a better idea.. since they're already spoofing the "From:" lines and can make up any subject they want, why not just scan the user's Inbox and take an existing (non-reply) subject, prepend a "Re: $SUBJECT" to it, and send it to the user. They'll see it as a reply to an existing Inbox thread, and mindlessly open it..
If it appears to come from someone they trust, perhaps even someone who would normally respond in a thread of that subject material, why wouldn't they just open the attachment? (thinking mom & pop Windows users here)
The difference is (in most cases) that she doesn't HAVE to learn how to secure it. Linux distributions come with almost everything disabled, including the MTA and other unnecessary daemons. You have to explicitly turn them on, or enable their insecure modes to open your system to attack from outside parties.
How long has Microsoft had the Messenger service enabled by default? What about the "Remote Registry" service? How many times have you needed to use regedit.exe on a remote registry? I can count that as being NONE, but Microsoft still enables it by default. Dozens of other services and ports are left blindly open.. and that isn't even counting the applications which have exploitable holes themselves.
To take that one-step further, what if they copied GNU/Linux code into SCO's UnixWare product (or the core SysV that it is derived from), and removed all attribution from the code they copied, and sold that to Sun, HP, IBM, SGI, Fujitsu, and so on... and those companies wrote their OWN code based on that code, and contributed THAT (derived?) code to Linux (as IBM has with code they've independantly created, derived from AIX, passed to the Free Software community)?
If SCO claims they "own" Linux, Unix, the sun, and air, then this vindicates their illegal actions.
If SCO gets the GPL invalidated (yeah, right =), then what they did is also "allowed", since the license they "validated" was invalid to begin with.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Continue to manufacture these non-existant arguments to suit your point of view.. I'm done, you're completely missing the point.
Have a sparkling day.
That wasn't me in the original post
Who cares about config files. Config files aren't the output format. Config files can (and should) change in ways that may be incompatible between releases. The documents themselves, should not be. They are completely separate, and unrelated things.
You mean except Kontour, Sketch, Odipodi, ploticus, figurine, and about a dozen others that all do raster and vector graphics on Linux and BSD..
Excuse me, we use it. Just because you don't doesn't mean it's not useful. We write this software for us, not for you. If you want to change our priorities, then you have to find a way to motivate us to write things you would want to use. Some of these could include the following:
Please read the following:
You and your companies have been living off of our creations now for several years. Saving thousands (and in some cases, millions) of dollars by using software we created in our spare time.
Now it's time you learned that this does not come for free.
They matter to us, and to the users that appreciate our creations. We don't really care what you want or think, because again, we do this for us, not for you. If you want to change that, feel free to try any of the techniques above.
The same people who aren't paying us for the useful stuff we created that you use every day. OpenOffice.org? Mozilla? Linux? Samba? I'm sure I could name dozens of others. How much have you contributed to those projects?
How ironic. He can't "afford" the "cost" with no monetary return. What if every single Free Software author decided to just stop making new releases until they had a "monetary" return? What then? Would you consider donating or helping out? Probably not.
Incidentally, Ed Ball saved $80,000 by switching to Free Software, almost recouping his entire monetary losses from the damage settlement. If he even decided to donate $10,000 of that to Free Software, it would make a huge shift in the priorities for a LOT of developers and users.
Excuse me? When did the GPL forbid selling Free Software? In fact, the GPL directly encourages you to do so. I can download Red Hat from the web, make some changes, slap my name all over it, and sell it as my own product (assuming I do not include Red Hat specific tools that are not GPL compatible with it, of course). There is nothing at all stopping me from selling any Free Software I can manage to derive a market for. Go re-read your license.
How about the same business model that has worked for centuries. If you want me to produce something for you, show me something in return. Monetary, contributory, congradulatory, or barter... it doesn't matter.
And you think people aren't going into the cupboard, picking up that software, installing it (or making copies for their home machines) and putting it back during lunch breaks? Come on now. That's ENCOURAGING license infringement.
Wait a minute.. does this mean I can't go out and buy a Dell computer, with Microsoft Windows installed on it, use it for a day, and then give it to my younger brother-in-law for use in school... without having to pay for a new Microsoft Windows license for the unit?
It's the same physical computer, running the same physical software it was shipped with. Why should I have to pay twice for it? Is this how Microsoft gets around the license discounts to OEM providers? Sell Microsoft Windows to Dell at $10.00/copy, then force end-users to pay full-price for it anyway? Nice scam.
When did an Open Source Office Productivity package come out that produces config files as its SaveAs format? I'm not aware of one. I produce documents that are meant to be printed, and viewed by other people, I don't use it to write "config files".
As you no-doubt already know, the format of an Office Productivity config file means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to an end user who will likely never be editing them. Who cares if the application is updated and the updates require different configuration options or config file formats.
You're comparing Apples to Orangutans here. Stay on topic.
Why not take the easier road.. audit the Linux kernel and remove all references to code which can not POSSIBLY contain SCO's own IP. All pieces of code which were written by you, me, and others who independantly created the code and patches. Remove all of that. What remains will either contain SCO's IP, or be questionable. Run that through the owners and trace it back. It can't be that impossible to find out what code they're talking about.
Of course, the rest of their claim is ludicrous. They're charging HP $32.00/unit on the embedded Linux devices they sell. Call me crazy, but I don't recall the last time I saw one single embedded Linux device with SMP, NUMA, or RCU running on it. Do you?
This turned from a contract dispute with IBM, to an all-out attack on the GPL itself. I'll give you three guesses who is pulling the strings behind the SCO puppet these days.. and your first two guesses don't count.
The IBM contract dispute was simply a smokescreen. They (or their puppeteer) does not like Free Software, period. They either want to be able to use it (which they can't), or abolish it (which they can't).
I eagerly await the letter from SCO to cease my use of my public Linux servers in exchange for a UnixWare license (which can't run any of my software anyway).
No, the solution is to remove the bullets from the gun.
Except that SCO themselves claims that they knew back in 2001 that their IP was allegedly in the Linux source tree. Why did they wait 2 more years? So more people could use, buy, adopt, and adapt "their" code, which means more people to extort this bogus licensing from. Sorry, that sword cuts both ways.
No, that would be like the law letting a rapist rape 20 women, instead of 1, so they can nail him on 20 counts of rape, instead of 1.
End of your story, yes, however, reality goes on. The real story is that the GPL is not a EULA. If there was infringing code or IP in the code I was given, which was transferred with the GPL, and no other exclusions or contracts that CLEARLY state that there is IP in the code I've received, I am not guilty of copyright infringement. Got that? Repeat it slowly.
Also, if IBM writes code on their own, which works with the SysV source tree that they bought a license to from SCO, IBM owns the copyright to that code that IBM created, NOT SCO. You can't claim copyright on someone else's copyrighted code. That's not how the law works.
In any case, I do not owe SCO anything for my dozens of Linux boxes, nor does any other Linux user, company, or business using, deploying, distributing, modifying, or selling Linux. Period.
..or should I say, "End of story."
I presume all of these patches were sent upstream to the maintainers of said packages, so they can evaluate them and roll them into their core versions, riiiiiight? Even submitting them to the project mailing list would be advantageous for those other users who might find them useful.
Oh yes, instead, use the BSD license, which gives Linksys full control of the source code you (or your community) has written (full control of their copy of your code, that is), make modifications to it, and release products with those modifications (without releasing source), so now NOBODY can take advantage of the updated code. Nice.
No thank you, the GPL protects against exavtly this type of abuse.
If you're going to be in attendance over a videocamera + sound anyway, why not do it in a virtual-reality kind of interface, where the "meeting" takes place on an LCD monitor, with each "virtual" attendee represented by their avatar.
Didn't they do this same thing in "Demolition Man", where the entire meeting was attended by a bunch of people on tall LCD monitors on popsicle stick chairs?
Excuse me, but what version of Windows must I purchase that allows me to run "Unix on x86 hardware"? I must have missed that version somewhere.
Do some more research and you'll find out that Linux does not exist to replace Microsoft products. In fact, that hasn't been the goal of a VERY large percentage of the Free Software/Open Source community. The purpose of Linux (and I'll wager to bet, BSD as well) is to provide a Free (and free) or near-free Unix for x86 hardware. Linus himself has repeatedly said this over and over.
That being said, Linux companies may be going directly for the throats of Microsoft's business model, but those Linux companies aren't contributing to the core codebase which comprises Linux itself.
If Microsoft was perfect, Linux would still exist, because Microsoft is not Free (or free), nor is it Unix.
When the itch becomes big enough to scratch.
Remember, we, as Free Software authors (note, most of us are unemployed now, and have been for well over a year or more), do this in our spare time. We focus on things that are interesting, innovative, or that pique our curiousities. What is the motivation for us, to get Linux working for a company, who will just use it to lower costs, but at the same time, not transfer those savings into hiring new people to work at their company?
We remain unemployed, while helping the company lower costs, so they can deploy Linux in their company, making their working environment cheaper and more efficient, and we get... bug reports. No thank you.
I work on Free Software because I like to, not because I have to. Once you make me feel like I "have to" work on the code, it no longer becomes fun. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. If it's not going to be "fun", then it better have some other benefit (i.e. like a job with a salary behind it or use some innovative new technology or something else) to make it interesting.
Let them feel the pain. When we're ready to make it work, we will.. or we won't. The source is there, they can certainly fix it themselves. Why do they have to "wait" for us to do it?
[fade back to reality]
Yes, "Your" version of the code is still available on "Your" web/ftp server. Your code is now 20 features and 50 bugs behind "SuperWidget 5.0". Nobody can benefit from "Your" code with these new features, without paying "Some Company, Inc." $5,000 per copy for "SuperWidget 5.0".
How does the BSD license guarantee that the improvements made to the code, remain available to everyone who wants to benefit from them? It doesn't.
Explain to me again, how this still is a better license, when the code was closed off after improvements were made? What if it takes you 2 years (alone) to match what "Some Company, Inc." took 2 months and 10 programmers to do?
Not if the code is modified by Microsoft in this case. They can improve upon it, make it faster, add features, whatever, and they can refuse to release that updated code... and then nobody benefits from it.
The GPL protects against this kind of abuse of copyright.
Yet another confirming reason why the GPL is "more free" than the BSD license.
If you use the BSD license in your code, any company can use it for any reason, make changes to it, improve it, add features, and basically tell you to piss off, while at the same time, closing off your code, and using it in a proprietary capacity. This stifles innovation, and stops the ability of others to benefit from modifications to YOUR code.
Having a license which permits "Free" code to be closed off, and "taken" from a developer, is not my idea of an open license at all.
Again, the GPL prohibits this, and for this reason, will always remain the better choice if you wish to keep your code out in the open, where others can continue to benefit from it, regardless of who modifies it or what changes are made to the core codebase.
And to bring this one paranoid step closer to reality, what if that code, copied from Linux, was then audited on the Microsoft side, and some Microsoft employee familiar with Linux code said "Hey, that code in Linux looks just like this code over here, that we wrote!", and immediately assumed that someone had copied the "Microsoft" code (which was actually stolen from Linux) into the Linux code, and not the reverse.